By Karen Swallow Prior
Sunday, February 08, 2026
This past Christmas, I mailed out holiday cards for the
first time in several years. My family recently
lost my mom and my dad lives with us, so my husband
and I included him in our family photo card. I sent one card to a friend from
long ago who’s never met my father. “He has a kind face,” she wrote back to me.
Then she added she’d guess he also is a kind man.
She’s right: He does, and he is.
The New Testament invokes an apt metaphor when it commands Christians to “clothe” ourselves with kindness. To be clothed
in something suggests a quality that is both felt by the wearer and seen by
others. Kindness is like this: It resides inside a person but is outwardly
visible.
Many philosophers, artists, and writers throughout history have considered the ways in which various character qualities
can be expressed by the outward appearance of a person. Such ideas were drawn
in part from the premodern belief (long outdated) that human bodies are
comprised of the same elements that make up the macrocosm and that the balance
of these elements (the “humors”) contributes to both bodily composition and
personality. This understanding of the interconnectedness of body and character
led to a symbolic view of physical form.
In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, for
example, each pilgrim’s physical appearance corresponds to their character: The
young, noble squire has curly locks of hair and sits well on his horse; the
hard-working yeoman (or farmer) has close-cropped hair and sun-browned face;
the duplicitous merchant wears fancy clothes and a forked beard; the Oxford
scholar, who would rather buy books than food, is rail thin and sober-faced;
the lusty Wife of Bath’s loose morals are suggested by the gap between her
teeth; and the utterly corrupt summoner has narrow eyes, flaky skin, and a
scanty beard.
Of course, no such neat correlation really exists.
Eventually, the pseudoscience of physiognomy—which,
reaching its height of influence in the 19th century, purported to
assess qualities of character and even intelligence based on facial
features—brought this easy equation of the inner and outer qualities of a
person to its ludicrous conclusion. But that doesn’t mean there is no
connection at all between character qualities and the physical body. Perhaps
there is a measure of wisdom and truth in the earlier, ancient understandings
held long before the excesses of scientism. Sometimes the virtues we practice
and attain do become us—and we they—in a way that can manifest in our bodies.
This may be especially true of the virtue of kindness.
Indeed, a growing body of research shows that people who
are kind gain physical and mental health benefits. Kindness doesn’t just help
the recipient of kindness but, it seems, it helps the person who is kind.
A 2024 NPR segment showcased research demonstrating this connection between
kindness and health. For example, one study showed that after two years of
volunteering as tutors for underprivileged kids for at least 15 hours a week,
participants’ brain health gained measurable improvements. Other research found
that people who volunteer regularly have a lower risk of mortality and can perform physical activities at higher levels.
Additional studies have linked kindness with improved
cardiovascular health, likely because acts of kindness often require more
physical activity, which improves both bodily and mental health. Being kind can
also increase the happiness of those who act with kindness consistently.
Thus, kindness, as with all other virtues, is its own reward.
Yet kindness is more than just a self-improvement plan.
It is central to Christian teaching and the Christian life.
First, God himself is kind, as the scriptures state over
and over. He who
is himself love says that love is kind.
God is characterized as exhibiting lovingkindness,
having compassion for all he has made, and demonstrating his love for us by sending Christ to die for us when we were
not deserving of such a sacrifice on our behalf.
Christians are likewise instructed to be kind: Christians
are commanded in the Bible to be clothed,
as already mentioned, in the qualities of mercy, humility, patience, and
kindness. Additionally, the Apostle Paul says that
Christians “must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to
teach, not resentful.” Kindness often goes against our own nature, but because
it is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, Christians have help in developing it. Being
kind demonstrates to others the very nature of God and marks our identity in
God, showing we are of the same kind as him. Kindness is an outward
expression of inward compassion. Kindness is, for the Christian, obedience to
God and the display of his character through our bodies—our hands, feet, faces,
eyes, wrinkles, and words—to all the world.
But what is kindness? It’s crucial to know what kindness
is—and what it is not.
Kindness isn’t the same as being nice, which simply means
being pleasant or agreeable. Kindness can be pleasant or agreeable, but
it goes much deeper, and it can sometimes diverge from those two things. The
word “kindness” comes from the root word “kin,” a fact I discuss in my chapter
on the virtue of kindness in On
Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Good Books. To be kind is
to recognize that others are of like kind. Thus, kindness essentially
means treating others as though they are family. Healthy family relationships
center neither on flattery or contrariness but are open, honest, and
loving—even, or especially, when dealing with difficult situations or hard
truths.
Because kindness is a virtue, it must be tied to other
virtues such as justice, courage, and prudence. Moreover, like all virtues,
kindness moderates between an extreme of excess and an extreme of deficiency.
Kindness is the balance between the vices of contrariness (or quarrelsomeness)
and obsequiousness (or flattery). And, like all virtues, kindness has an
opposing vice. Some assume the opposite of kindness is cruelty, but there is a
longer tradition that, perhaps surprisingly, points to another vice as the one
that directly opposes kindness: envy.
While kindness is essentially good will toward
another, envy is ill will. Thomas Aquinas defines envy, simply, as “sorrow for another’s good.” While good will
leads naturally to acts of kindness, ill will leads easily to cruelty—actions
that increase the suffering, rather than the joys, of the object of envy. Envy
arises from vainglory,
Aquinas observes, and produces “daughters” of its own. Envy leads to gossip and
defamation, joy at another’s pain, and pain in another’s joy.
Kindness is rooted in the desire to love one’s neighbor.
Envy is rooted in the desire to best one’s neighbor. Envy culminates in hatred.
Before Cain murdered his brother Abel, he envied him.
The trajectory from envy to hatred—and away from
kindness—is descriptive of some alarming trends in the discourse among some
claiming to represent Christianity and Christian interests. Across social
media, certain self-appointed “thought leaders,” heads of
institutions, and journalists are trafficking in tale-bearing,
degrading
and defaming, taking sorrow in the joys of others, and delighting in others’ pain.
In doing so, they embrace hatred, not
love, and spurn the central Christian virtue of kindness.
The failure to pursue kindness is not only a failure to
live up to the doctrines and demands of the Christian faith, but unkindness—as
both scientific research and the Bible show—ultimately harms the person who is
unkind as well.
Again, artists have captured the way the kindness or envy
we feel inside and express in our actions is worn on our very bodies. The
envious person is often portrayed as lean and rakish, prickly in both words and
appearance, while the kind person is depicted as generous in body, spirit, and
face. We see this contrast between Charles Dickens’ Ebeneezer Scrooge and
Fezziwig in A Christmas Carol, for example. Other characters who display
these contrasts include Shakespeare’s “lean and hungry” Cassius in contrast to
the crinkly eyes and rosy cheeks of Jolly Ol’ Saint Nick. Or the Hunchback of
Notre Dame in contrast to the laugh-lined face of Gandalf.
Envy consumes.
Kindness generates.
For the Christian, kindness isn’t optional. Nor is it
optional for a civil society.
The good news is that while kindness isn’t natural for
most of us, it can, like all virtues, be cultivated through practice. Such
practice requires exercise and intention. But, like a muscle, with practice
kindness becomes easier, more natural and habitual. Even better news is
research that shows that kindness is contagious.
Kindness has ripple effects that go far beyond the initial act or gesture. But
the same is true of cruelty too, unfortunately.
Kindness isn’t likely to stop wars, prevent violence, or
satisfy the lusts of the envious heart. But like a leaven, kindness can make
our lives and our world a bit lighter, a little more expansive, and lift all
whom it touches—including the ones who wear it.
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